‘Jane Gideon.’
Sutton waved his arm. ‘Oh, the information was too vague. The point is, I checked the daily crime reports. If it’s the same woman, she’s robbed half-a-dozen people.’
Tankard slowed for a level crossing. The tyres slapped over the rails and then he accelerated again. ‘You could bring her in, put her in a line-up, see if anyone identifies her.’
‘The boss would never okay it. This is just a hunch,’ Sutton said. ‘But a photograph, now that’s a different matter.’
He reached back between the seats to a camera and dumped it in Tankard’s lap. It was a Canon fitted with a telephoto lens.
‘I hope you know how to use it,’ Sutton said.
‘No problem. Just keep her talking where I can get a clear shot at her.’
They came to the Tidal River Caravan Park, a depressing patch of stunted ti-tree, dirty sand and stagnant, mosquito-infested water that wasn’t a river and hadn’t seen a tide in a long time. The main area consisted of toilet blocks, a laundry, the main office and early summer holidaymakers in large caravans with tent annexes. The margins of the park, nearest the main road and poorly sheltered from dust, noise, wind and sun, had been set aside for longer term tenants in caravans, recreation vehicles and plywood or aluminium portable homes.
‘Gypsies?’ the park manager said.
‘A woman calling herself Sofia. Tells fortunes,’ Sutton said.
‘Oh, her. A gypsy? Didn’t know we had any. I just thought she was a wog. Goes to show.’
‘If you’d point it out on the map?’ Sutton said.
The map was rain-stained and sun-faded behind a sheet of thick, scratched perspex. The manager pointed. ‘There, in the corner. Her and her brothers and a few kids.’
Tankard drove slowly through the park. Sutton sensed his restless, swivelling eyes. To be that obsessed would be to invite an ulcer, he thought. He pointed. ‘There.’
Sofia and a small naked girl were sitting on frayed nylon folding chairs under a canvas awning at the side of a dirty white Holden Jackaroo that had been converted into a small mobile home. There was a matching Jackaroo behind it and a caravan behind that. There was no vehicle coupled to the caravan but a rugged, snouty-looking Land Cruiser was parked under a nearby tree. Sutton saw three men watching from a cement bench-seat and table in the shade of a leaning wattle. The ground was bare and hard. Sutton had an impression of untidiness, even though Sofia and the men were neatly dressed and there was no sign of litter at the site.
Perhaps it was the dog, a skinny, threadbare blue heeler. It was lying in the dirt, paws on what Sutton realised had recently been a good-quality leather backpack, the fine black leather now torn and chewed.
The three men watched him get out of the Commodore. As he closed the door, one got to his feet and sauntered away. Before Sutton had reached Sofia and the child, a second man strolled off, his hands in his pockets. Then the third. What flashed into Sutton’s mind then was the fact of the four-wheel-drive vehicles with rear compartments. Then he thought of Sofia and the reason for his visit, and realised that, with the men gone, John Tankard could aim his camera without being spotted.
‘Remember me, Sofia?’
She watched him. There was no humour or animation in her face. ‘Your little girl is happier.’
‘That’s because the crиche is closed from now until the end of January. My wife-’
‘She needs time to adjust.’
Sutton supposed that Sofia meant his daughter, not his wife, and wondered if she were being clairvoyant now or simply expressing an obvious truth.
‘Two things, Sofia. Number one. You came to us saying you knew where Jane Gideon was. Have you thought any more about that? Was this a feeling you had, did someone tell you where she was, did you actually see her? I might have been a bit offhand the other day,’ he concluded hastily.
‘Not offhand. Disbelieving. You disbelieved me.’
‘Well, it’s not every day-’
‘You found her near water, didn’t you, just as I said you would.’
‘Perhaps your brothers-’
‘They don’t know anything.’
‘Fine. So you felt that Jane Gideon was dead, is that what you’re saying? You had no direct knowledge?’
‘If you want to put it that way. What’s the second matter you want to talk about?’
Sutton looked at the dog. It had fallen asleep with its jaw on the backpack. ‘Sofia, in your role as clairvoyant-’
‘Seer.’
‘-seer, do you sometimes bless people? Their homes or their possessions, I mean. Tell them their worldly goods will multiply, that kind of thing?’
Sofia seemed to draw upon her reserves of dignity. ‘I’m not a magician. I don’t conjure up things that aren’t there to begin with.’
‘Fine, fine.’
‘There are charlatans who say they can do these things.’
‘You wouldn’t know of any of them? Where I can find them?’
At that point, a small brown snake began to cross the space between the rotting nylon chairs and the caravan. Neither Sutton nor Sofia said anything, but Sofia gently stepped over to the child in the second chair and lifted her free of it. The snake glided, unconcerned, beneath the caravan.
‘You learn to live with them,’ Sofia said.
There was a special article about him in the main Saturday paper. It said he’d ‘snatched’ both women. What a laugh; they both got willingly into the passenger seat. Number three, now, she was snatched, good and proper.
He hadn’t been prowling when he saw her the first time. It had been dawn, first light, and he’d been on his way to work. He saw her jogging, slim legs pounding, elbows pumping, shoulderblades flexing beneath the narrow straps of a singlet top. Sweatband to hold her hair back. His headlights in the uncertain dawn picking up the reflective strips on the heels of her running shoes. The air was cool. It would be hot later, and she probably had a job to go to, so that’s why she was running at dawn. He veered wide around her, went on down the Old Peninsula Highway, thinking it through.
That had been several days ago. Each morning after that, the pattern had been repeated.
This morning he’d left half an hour earlier, pulled over on to the dirt at the side of the road, raised the passenger-side rear wheel with a quick-release hydraulic jack, removed the hubcap and one wheel nut, and waited.
When she came upon him he was walking around in small circles at the back wheel, bent over, his hands clasped behind his back. Her feet pounded, coming closer, and began to falter.
‘Lost something?’
He looked up at her with relief, flashing a smile. ‘Blasted wheel nut. The light’s not good enough and I haven’t got a torch.’
Half-bent, he continued to search near the jack. She joined him. In these conditions-dawn, air quite still-he’d have plenty of warning if another vehicle were coming. He and number three walked around like that for a short time, then, when she widened the search to take in the area near the exhaust pipe, and crouched to peer beneath the rear axle, he took her.
Now, that was a snatch.
Ten
Bye-bye, Sprog,’ Scobie Sutton said.
